The Unusual

My most effective learning environment is where I’m in a lurch, have no choice but to rely on myself or my knowledge, and it exercises that little bit of learned stuff under stress. I think that’s why I love to travel: I don’t know how to say in Portuguese “it feels like an alien rooting about in my colon, please take it out before he emerges to enslave the world!”, or “Dear god, do people actually eat that? voluntarily?” in Thai.

Sometimes, the things people will do to get-by day-to-day without the incentive of Reality-TV cameras is humbling, it reminds me how good it is where I grew up.

Unfortunately, too, I get to see how other cultures do things, and often how they have a different idea, a better idea.

This would normally be fortunate, but in returning back from this discovery, I return to people who have not seen anything but the one way, and that way is better, of course, or else they would have thought of the better way. You can call it the American Pride, or the Chinese referral to their valued 5000 years of history, or a 3-word put-down that a Brit will utter to show not only are they superior, but only the very stupid would think otherwise of the country that spawned both the Industrial Revolution and the Beatles.

OK, I made up the Beatles — they were real, but are not a critical part of British pride.

When an idea that is successful in many other countries is mentioned, many people simply cannot seem to accept that another country invented something better. Indeed, the craziest of excuses will be used, the latest being the medical industry in the US: “our system is expensive, but everything less expensive must be worse” — despite the fact that most countries have a lower mortality rate than the US. Indeed, the follow-on to that logic was “the mortality rate in the US is all because of immigrants”, which is the most unsubstantiated line of (un)reasoning I’ve heard since Palin’s Healthcare Deathcamps.

Thermostats. Brits continue to use these non-functional plumbing setups perhaps due to never traveling to another country and seeing a thermostat in a shower tap, or seeing how some places (except NYC) have thermostats for home heating-control. It’s not rocket-science, it’s a bi-metal coil that reacts to heat changes, coupled with a mercury bulb and carriage that twists to re-orient where “gravity” intersects the twisting or untwisting of the bimetal to get the mercury on the contacts.

OK, if you didn’t follow that, you may not be smart enough to build a thermostat, but dammit, you can recognize the difference between “keeps the room warm for you” vs “get up, turn the tap on until the room is unbearably hot, then turn it off until the room is frigid as a coal mine”

I know, it’s a subtle difference.

The resistance to recognize this can easily be passed off as “I don’t need silly luxuries like that” but the refusal to look outside at other solutions is crippling: the time spent on re-solving the same problem can be better spent taking a solution and enhancing it, or re-tasking innovation to the problems that are NOT already solved.

Britain, Thermostats were invented in 1883, did you think it was time to look at more recent problems yet?

That is why the Chinese will win: despite their 5000-yr-history, which obviously proves that they should know how to invent everything, they are willing to reach over and reuse the solution from another country (for example, TDS-CDMA) and move themselves forward.

Limiting oneself by patriotism implies that eventually, the only achievement to be proud of will be the loyalty to keep shouting “we are the best” despite the obvious truth. Just like Red Socks Fans.

Le bien mal à qui ne profite jamais – unknown

I pointed out a flaw in Salesforce.com — a wellknown outsourced Customer-Relationship-Manager — and although it’s understood to be a flaw, “SFDC works as designed”.

I’m unconcerned whether it’s a coding error, or a design error; an error is an error. Working-as-designed implies that the implementation was flawlessly accurate; a design error is still an error.

In this case, it simply shows that SFDC is unwilling to accept that other countries exist, and that they speak more than one language, and that those people are alienated if you’re forcing your culture upon them. It’s worse if you’re forcing your customers to force that culture on their users.

I worked for a few really good managers; most would grip the general ideas of manager-vs-developer work styles, and efficiency of all-hands meetings. S.Lott is the latest of many to summarize in his entry “Meetings“.

In short:

• 12 direct-reports in a 1-hour meeting is 13 hours consumed. Luckily, 7 direct-reports is only one day of effort wasted.
• An all-hands meeting should be brief, focused and logged
• An iterative status report from each attendee is the opposite of these rules

I was lucky enough to work with Rao Hong for a while; he was laconic, targeted, efficient. He did call me into his office to discuss, but it wasn’t a power-game, it was a meeting-of-opportunity.

I get to work with Clarissa Eastham; she takes names, actions, and follows up; also, she protects her people like precious resources, inducing attempts to make oneself worthwhile.

I was pleased to work with Julian Chen; he excelled at brief meetings-of-opportunity, and the ability to make the other person feel truly significant. Julian’s style of strategic meetings where possible were also quite effective at the one-on-one.

There were others, but these examples approach the “Holy Grail” of the PMs in S.Lott’s article, and excel in other attributes.

I love feedback, suggestions, ideas on how to improve; in fact, I almost feel as if I’m withheld a chance to improve if I don’t get feedback.

At the same time, vague negative feedback is as useful as hindsight and fortune-tellers.

We’ve all heard it: someone who visits a fortune-teller, gets a horoscope-accurate diagnosis (“you’ll come into money but it involved a large mass of water”) and matches that to whatever happens (“I found $50 in a High-C -brand orange juice — and High-C is like High Seas!  That fortune teller is so accurate”)

Vague suggestions simply allow someone to say “see?  I told you not to do that” after the fact: to have been right.  There’s little value in being right beyond a victory at the other’s expense, and a history of being right so that one’s advice is more easily accepted without question.  It has little value beyond what hindsight gives us — trading re-use for lower acceptance threshold for accuracy.  Hindsight is accurate.

Vague suggestions are an opener for conversation, but discussing a vague suggestion might involve refining it.  It might shine the Bullshit Spotlight at the information and chase the smelling bits out, or might beat up an imprecise idea that has merit but is difficult to express.  Discussion should be done with a certain gentleness.

Once a suggestion is less-vague, more concrete, it’s actually valuable; it would be a shame to attack someone offering genuine help, chasing away his or her idea through aggressive discussion to refine it.

When I feel embarassed is when I start to complain, I think.

In school, I was younger than everyone in my grade — I thank my parents for getting me into school earlier, but it did make me “smaller”.  nearly-last chosen for sports, last in many competitions, it was not until taking Karate in my last few years of school that I got any sense of being functional.

I’m still not allowed to run, jump, catch, or throw.  It’s unsafe for those around me.

Yeah, I’m clumsy.  Karate makes me “clumsy except in Karate things”.  Dance makes me “not so clumsy while dancing”.

I remember I used to complain while hiking (still do?).  It’s right where I start to feel inadequate that every little gear problem, rubbing pack, sweaty spot gets up my ire.

For me, having the right gear is simply removing complaints from the ordeal.  I do like the feeling, but I don’t like the feeling of having complained, sucking the joy from those around me.

I remember Basic Training: “Faster, Mr Clark, show some effort” (this while I know the hurl is coming: clammy cool cheeks, flushed look, bit dizzy, the bright-flashing-buffalo is making an appearance).  I simply could not excel.

Hiking in the Delaware Water-gap, I had been working out my legs considerably (squats and presses) but my lungs couldn’t keep up.  I remember the bright-flashes, and remember from Basic Training that when I get to 4 or 5 flashes per blink, the crash is coming, so I stopped.  She ridicules me to this day, but you know: I wasn’t complaining, I felt like my quads were singing, charging up the mountain at a crazy pace.  It was beautiful, and I think that’s what sports people feel like.

I remember “bagging 4ks” with Erick, and I remember that I was a bit bitchy.  Near the end, the gear was jelling with me, and my stubbornness kicked in: we had decided on those peaks, and I was going to do them, I just had to push a bit harder considering the way the light was fading.  With crampons in the snow, the charge up a 45-degree slope for “Avalon Peak” was beautiful.  A song in my legs, my very good friend at my back with his endless good mood.

My red/yellow hat holds those memories.  I just with there wasn’t complaining that day.

What is Verified by Visa?

No one takes responsibility: if you ask the Bank, it’s Visa’s fault; if you ask Visa, it’s your bank’s fault.  If you as the vendor, they say it’s required.  No one will tell you “I decided this”.

Once it’s there, you cannot remove it without canceling your card.

Once active, it affects all your cards.

At any point you cannot enter your password, that’s it, you have no funds.  On ALL cards.  Finished.  Happened to me in Bali, so if you’re thinking “that’s crazy”, try arriving penniless in a beautiful island for a week.  Some fun.

If there’s any fraudulent purchase made, it’s no longer Visa’s fault, nor the vendor’s fault, but we still pay the extra levy to Visa to cover the cost of the occasional fraudulent transaction.

Why do we, as customers, accept this?

Why is it still “We accept Visa” when it’s really “We accept Visa with this extra baggage only” ?

Yes, Mastercard has “seen the light” of this profit-center, and similarly absolves itself of any responsibility by passing it back to the customer.

The very first clause of the Obama/Biden Healthcare Reform is such an obvious benefit, I really don’t see why there’s so much pushback — except that it would reveal some poor industry practices.  Let me first post a refresher for those who have been too lazy disinterested busy to read a single word of the objectives before posting arguments:

(1) INVEST IN ELECTRONIC HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS. Most medical records are still

stored on paper, which makes them difficult to use to coordinate care, measure quality, or reduce medical errors.

Processing paper claims also costs twice as much as processing electronic claims. Barack Obama and Joe

Biden will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad

adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records.  They

will also phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT and commit the necessary federal resources

to make it happen.  Barack Obama and Joe Biden will ensure that these systems are developed in coordination

with providers and frontline workers, including those in rural and underserved areas. Barack Obama and Joe

Biden will ensure that patients’ privacy is protected.  A study by the Rand Corporation found that if most

hospitals and doctors offices adopted electronic health records, up to $77 billion of savings would be realized

each year through improvements such as reduced hospital stays, avoitesting, more appropriate drug utilization, and other efficiencies.

So what’s the big deal of making things efficient?

HIPAA defines the patient-confidentiality regulations, so there’s nothing new.

How about drug/drug conflicts?  This enables an automation that is a second/third set of eyes to support the overworked staff pharmacists who routinely catch drug conflicts in prescriptions.  When they don’t, it’s the patient’s family members who often see what the pharmacist hadn’t seen — too busy, or they had a human moment.  Even as the pharmacy experts to support doctors and nurses who already know a considerable amount of their craft, pharmacists make errors too.

No, it’s the habit that the family members tend to catch that will be stopped: double-booking.  A friend of mine was helping her mother in the hospital, and in addition to the occasional drug conflict she would recognize, she also found that the hospital had booked her mother into three beds at once, or into intensive care but had never moved her nor changed the level of attention that she received.

I have a lot of respect for medical-care professionals be they physical or mental, pre-op, post-op, avoiding-op, OB/Gyn, pediatrician, etc.  Even Bob Bloom, the massive psych nurse, whose size/power and chill nature both helped calm psych patients when they got excited.

I don’t have respect for the little lies that get swept under the rug because no one cross-checks.

…and I don’t respect those who protect liars.

I’m sure that’s a component of the push-back on what’s obviously a good thing, this dragging of the medical information systems into the 20th century, even if we’re now in the 21st.